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At last the day has come for Johnny Depp fans that have been dying to see him return to some more gritty and adult-oriented work to jump for joy! The new drama Black Mass from director Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart, Out of the Furnace), which chronicles the relationship between notorious Boston-mobster Whitey Bulger and FBI special agent John Connolly that saw much of Bulger’s competition taken off the streets, is now playing in theaters across the country. Reviews, thus far, have been somewhat surprising: Depp’s performance has been praised as a triumphant return to more in-depth characters, but the film, itself, plays out more like a gangster-parody movie. Either way it remains one of the year’s most highly anticipated films. Also appearing in the supporting cast are actors Joel Edgerton (The Great Gatsby, Exodus: Gods and Kings), Benedict Cumberbatch (The Fifth Estate, The Imitation Game), Dakota Johnson (The Social Network, 21 Jump Street), Kevin Bacon (Apollo 13, Mystic River), Peter Sarsgaard (Flightplan, Jarhead), and Adam Scott (Step Brothers, Parks & Recreation). Also playing in theaters is the new drama Sicario from director Denis Villeneuve (Enemy, Prisoners), with actors Emily Blunt (The Five-Year Engagement, Edge of Tomorrow), Josh Brolin (American Gangster, No Country For Old Men), and Benicio Del Toro (The Usual Suspects, Traffic), which revolves around the War on Drugs along the US-Mexican border. I think it’s a fair bet that your money will be well spent seeing either of these, so put both titles on your ‘Must-See’ list and enjoy the weekend!

Every year the Toronto International Film Festival serves as one of the major international film festivals that close out the fiscal year, and this year’s festival is sure to feature an excellent celebration of Oscar-worthy filmmaking. Toronto’s film festival is usually filled with entries seen earlier in the year at festivals like Sundance and Cannes, but it also brings its own special line-up to its audience. This year several highly anticipated films will have the honor of being shown during the festivities, most notably the Whitey Bulger biopic Black Mass with Johnny Depp, Matt Damon‘s next space adventure following Interstellar titled The Martian, and one I personally am really excited to see, another biopic called Trumbo with Emmy-winner Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad, Godzilla) in the title role of McCarthy-era screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, whose film credits were published under various pseudonyms over the years after he was blacklisted during Senator McCarthy’s famous Communist-trials in the 1950s. Continue reading →

Oscar-nominee Johnny Depp (Blow, Public Enemies) has recently been working on new installments for the Pirates of the Caribbean and Alice in Wonderland franchises, plus dealing with his girlfriend being locked up in Australia for smuggling canine’s into the country. But his next big project with director Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart, Out of the Furnace) is currently gearing up for the big screen this September. Black Mass, which we’ve been following for some time now, stars Depp as Whitey Bulger, perhaps the most violent and notorious gangster in the history of South Boston. The film comes from the book Black Mass: The Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob by Boston Globe reporters Dick Lehr and Gerald O’Neill and chronicles Bulger’s partnership with FBI agent John Connolly, who long delayed the bureau’s capture of Bulger by focusing his attention on Bulger’s competitors. The movie has undergone several changes over the last year, including director Barry Levinson and actor Tom Hardy being attached at various points in the production. Making up the final supporting cast include actors Dakota Johnson (21 Jump Street, Fifty Shades of Grey), Joel Edgerton (The Great Gatsby, Exodus: Gods and Kings), Benedict Cumberbatch (Star Trek: Into Darkness, The Imitation Game), Kevin Bacon (Apollo 13, Mystic River), Adam Scott (Step Brothers, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty), and Peter Sarsgaard (Jarhead, Flightplan). The book by Lehr and O’Neill was adapted for the big screen by Jez Butterworth (Edge of Tomorrow, Get On Up) and Mark Mallouk (Rush, A Walk Among The Tombstones). Watch the full-length trailer here on MADE, and be sure to mark your calendars for September 18th!

We finally have a new trailer for the long-anticipated Whitey Bulger project featuring Oscar-nominee Johnny Depp (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Blow), titled Black Mass. The film comes from director Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart, Out of the Furnace) working from a script adaptation of Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill‘s novel of the same name by screenwriters Jez Butterworth (Edge of Tomorrow, Get On Up) and Mark Mallouk (Rush, A Walk Among The Tombstones). Depp will star as real-life Boston gangster Whitey Bulger (whose life was also the premise for Martin Scorsese‘s 2004 hit The Departed), the most notorious violent criminal in Boston’s history, who along with his former childhood friend John Connolly, now working for the FBI, brought on a violent crime-spree in 1970s Boston as they attempted to wipe out Bulger’s mafia-competition in the city. Also starring in the film are actors Dakota Johnson (21 Jump Street, 50 Shades of Grey), Benedict Cumberbatch (The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, The Imitation Game), Joel Edgerton (The Great Gatsby, Exodus: Gods and Kings), Kevin Bacon (Footloose, Hollow-Man), and Adam Scott (Step Brothers, Parks & Recreation). The new trailer is here on MADE; look for the movie in theaters this September 18, 2015.

Ever since fictional actor Vincent Chase appeared on the set of Nine Brave Souls in HBO’s Entourage, audiences have been wondering whether or not a real movie based on wildfire firefighters would ever actually appear on the big screen. Now it seems that writer/director Scott Cooper (Out of the Furnace, Crazy Heart) is preparing to set up a project based on the Granite Mountain Hotshots crew who lost 19 members in a wildfire blaze at Yarnell Hill last summer. Although the director is about to begin filming his Whitey Bulger biopic Black Mass with Johnny Depp, Hotshots could potentially be his next project. The tragedy was the greatest loss of firefighters in a wildfire in 80 years, and now Brendan McDonough, the only survivor, will provide his account of the event tp screenwriter Ken Nolan, who will write the script for Cooper and producers Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Mike Menchel. Family and friends of the victims are also being approached by the filmmakers for details in order to paint a more accurate and loyal picture of the men. We’ll definitely keep you updated on this one.

Last week we told you about the upcoming Whitey Bulger biopic, entitled Black Mass, which was originally being developed by director Barry Levinson with Johnny Depp set to take the leading role. Depp, however, fell away from the project after Levinson also departed, leaving Universal Studios a gangster film with great potential, but no lead, and no director. Recently, however, Out of the Furnace director Scott Cooper has been in talks with Universal to take over for Levinson, and with Cooper signing on to helm the film, Depp has come back to the project with renewed interest and has now confirmed with Deadline Hollywood that he has signed a deal to take the lead role, with Tom Hardy in early talks to take the supporting role of FBI agent John Connolly. The story of Bulger and his rise to criminal power and subsequent fall from grace was actually the inspiration for Martin Scorsese’s Academy Award winning Boston crime-drama The Departed (2006), which won the Best Picture and Best Director Oscar and earned Leonardo DiCaprio a Golden Globe for Best Actor and Mark Wahlberg the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. The script for Black Mass is being adapted by Mark Mallouk from the novel Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between The FBI and The Irish Mob by Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill, and the film is expected to be in production by May of this year.

Director Scott Cooper just recently released his violence-driven drama Out of the Furnace with Christian Bale, Casey Affleck, and Zoe Saldana, and Woody Harrelson, and is now turning his directing efforts at another crime-drama based on the life of Boston crime lord Whitney Bulger. The project is titled Black Mass and is based on the book Black Mass: The Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob by Boston Globe reporters Dick Lehr and Gerald O’Neill. The story they tell of Bulger is one of violence and betrayal, as the former kingpin decides to give information to the FBI in order to take down a competing Mafia family, only to be double crossed and prosecuted for his crimes, along with John Connolly, a member of the FBI believed to be the reason it took the agency so long to finally take down Bulger. Johnny Depp was originally involved with the project with director Barry Levinson, but since then he has backed out and the script has been given to Cooper for rewriting. Depp may still be interested in doing the film, but that is still unclear at this point, so we’ll have to wait for Cooper to get the final screenplay completed before we really know who will be filling in the roles. Stay tuned for more information on this one.